Friday, July 10, 2009

Allow me to once again indulge by bringing up some of my pearls of wisdom written a few years ago about the EU's attitude to hedge funds:

Drifting my mind back across The Channel, I am reminded of yet another economic retard. Step forward Mr Jo Leinen MEP: socialist and German so we can probably guess he’s not well up there with the liberal market economy. Mr Leinen, who studied half an economics degree during the 1970s, when people were convinced that Keynesian demand management actually works, happens to think that people in Europe shouldn’t have anything to do with hedge funds, because they are an ‘alien concept in Europe.’ That’s not strictly true, actually, Mr Leinen, any more than the IS-LM curve is.

Assets under management of the hedge fund industry totalled $1.13 trillion at the end of 2005. This was up 13% on 2004 and almost 50% on three years ago. Between 2006 and 2008 assets are expected to grow by 15%. So for a new idea, it’s doing pretty well. About 2/3 of hedge funds are managed offshore in the Caymen Islands, British Virgin Islands or Bermuda. The biggest onshore collection is in the USA, with 34% of funds and 24% of assets. London is Europe’s leading centre for hedge fund management, with three quarters of European hedge fund investment, ₤300bn, managed within the UK.

It's great news that Borisis now trying to defend the City of London from the EU who don't want London to be a successful financial centre. It's nothing to do with their desire to protect consumers from something they don't understand and everything to do with bitterness and jealousy.

If the EU manage to fuck up financial markets just as they have done democracy and transparent accounting then businesses won't move to Germany they'll leave the EU altogether.

However, wouldn't it be nice if the rest of the Tory party agreed with what Boris said?

UKIP pointed out Tory MEPs voted for the new EU directive last year, while they were the only party that voted against it. UKIP MEP and former mayoral candidate Gerard Batten said: “It's great that Boris is supporting the City in this way but a shame the Tories didn't when they had the chance.

In September the Conservative MEPs were whipped to support legislation written by the socialist former Prime Minister of Denmark, Poul Nyup Rasmussen which provided the base for these draconian laws. The Hedge Funds and Private Equity Report passed by a massive majority in Strasbourg was designed to punish the City rather than to improve its actions.